On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 09:36:11 +0200, Miguel Carrasquer <
mcv@...> wrote:
>Perhaps a trace of a Castilian pronunciation *sañto < sanctu, with palatal
>/n^/ is retained in the Basque loan <saindu> "holy" (it could also be from
>Gascon).
Gascon of course doesn't have final -o (or -u), but the word appears to
have been borrowed at a very early stage, at a time when it hardly makes
sense to talk about "Castilian" or "Gascon".
If Latin sanctus had borrowed in Basque, it would have given *zandu (cf.
punctu > pundu), with initial laminal /s/ and final /u/ (and application of
the Basque soundlaw */nt/ > /nd/) unless a point had been made of
pronouncing the /k/, in which case we'd expect *zangutu. A recent loan
from Spanish would have given *santo, with apical /s/ and final /o/, and
conservation of /nt/. In <saindu>, the initial s- points to a time when
neighbouring Romance (Castilian and Gascon) had already changed laminal
into apical /s/, but final -u seems to suggest that the change to -o had
not yet taken place, which is strange. Perhaps Basque was just a bit slow
to pick up on that change, and continued to borrow Romance words as if they
still had the Latin masculine ending -u. The same phenomenon still applies
to e.g. Spanish words in -ón (< Medieval Spanish -one), which in the Middle
Ages were borrowed into Basque as -one, which then gave -õe > -oi in
Basque, so that a modern word like <camión> "truck/lorry", is borrowed as
kamioi, because of the equation Spanish -ón = Basque -oi.
In any case, Basque <saindu> must fo back to an early Romance form *sañtu
or *sañto, more specifially a Romance with apical /s/ (which occurs in a
broad band along the Cantabrian coast, the Pyrinees and a bit into France,
roughly Galician/Northern Portuguese, Astur-Leonese, Northern Castilian,
Gascon, Northern Catalan and Southern Languedocian).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...